About Indi Young

In this workshop you will:

• Learn to ask “why” enough times to peel back the layers
• Recognize when you are making assumptions
• Convert stories into a mental model
• Support people better by filling in gaps in the model

A friend and I were talking about movies. She goes frequently and I hardly go at all. I was full of curiosity about her moviegoing world. She was talking about how she was selective about which movies she’ll see with friends “as a social thing” and which movies she prefers to see alone. I asked her what the difference was for her. She replied, “I find that friends tend to taint the movie for me. They won’t see it the way I do. Maybe they’ll have a comment that I’m not feeling at the moment and I find it distracting or maddening. I like to be completely immersed during the film. Usually the topic will move me and I’ll have a strong reaction. That’s another reason I don’t want anyone with me, or they’d see me crying. But I think that’s what the director wanted. I’m trying to get the full experience the director wanted the audience to have.” I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I prompted her to explain. She said, “I wrote a play in college. Some people did get it and some people didn’t. I thought, ‘Were they not paying attention?’ It’s out of respect. That’s what I would want if was a movie maker.”

My friend prefers to see movies alone so that she can give the director her full attention and receive the experience that was intended. It’s a philosophy she holds, partially because as a student she discovered that the audience for her own play wasn’t paying complete attention and she knew how frustrating that felt. If my friend hadn’t been so willing to unpack her preferences for me, I wouldn’t have discovered this philosophy, just the preference, “I like to see films alone.”

Unfortunately, much research stops at the preference level. But as designers it’s important to realize that knowing the philosophies and emotions that drive users’ behaviors helps you understand them and allows you to create designs to better serve them. If you learn to listen and notice, instead of making assumptions, you can learn to dig deeper and become a more effective designer. When you empathetically try on a group’s ideals and work to understand the way they make decisions, you can create more effective tools with greater function. All this will help brighten their world.